WEBVTT - Fried Egg Stories: Remaking Harding Park 0:00:00.400 --> 0:00:02.880 This episode of fried Egg Stories is brought to you 0:00:02.920 --> 0:00:07.640 by Athletic Brewing. Athletic Brewing is pioneering a revolution in 0:00:07.800 --> 0:00:11.960 non alcoholic craft beer. They use high quality, all natural 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:15.240 ingredients to create great tasting brews that are suitable for 0:00:15.440 --> 0:00:20.040 everyone and every occasion. This is fully fermented craft beer 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:22.919 that just happens not to have alcohol. It's low in 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:25.759 calories and it tastes great. So if you want to 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:29.280 keep a clear head and drink healthier, Athletic Brewing is 0:00:29.320 --> 0:00:33.480 here for you. Visit Athleticbrewing dot com. You'll get free 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.880 shipping nationwide, and if you use the discount code fried 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:40.040 egg Fall twenty, you'll get twenty percent off your entire 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:44.600 order between now and November first. That's Athleticbrewing dot com 0:00:44.640 --> 0:00:46.400 fried Egg Fall twenty. 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:50.400 The fried egg requires a different technique. What you need 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.560 to do is actually square the face so it'll dig 0:00:53.640 --> 0:00:57.600 down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right out. 0:00:57.440 --> 0:00:59.520 Onto the green here's the take. 0:00:59.560 --> 0:01:02.360 Plat of a buried lion of bunker is completely different 0:01:02.400 --> 0:01:05.560 than playing out of a nice clean lion a greenside bunker. 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:08.720 You need to be aggressive on any shop weather. It's 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:10.880 sitting cleanly for its Friday Egg. 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:13.880 Well, we've all faced it, regretted Frida egg. 0:01:14.600 --> 0:01:15.760 It's not to be feared, though. 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:17.440 It's actually a pretty easy shot to hit. 0:01:24.520 --> 0:01:28.800 When we think about Harding Park's demise, it's one thing 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:32.800 to look out and of course you love and see 0:01:32.840 --> 0:01:37.760 dried out fairways and greens with daisies on them and 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:42.800 bunkers with no sand in them. That's one thing. It's 0:01:42.840 --> 0:01:46.560 another to see your golf course turned into a parking lot. 0:01:49.080 --> 0:01:51.880 I'm bo Linx. I am a lawyer by training. I 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:55.160 practiced law for over forty five years in San Francisco. 0:01:56.080 --> 0:02:00.560 I've played golf for almost sixty years in San f Cisco, 0:02:01.280 --> 0:02:07.080 largely on public courses, and I've always been someone who 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:11.920 saw great beauty in these golf courses and had so 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:16.080 many great memories playing them. I was convinced that people 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:19.359 had to stand up to preserve them. I've always been 0:02:19.400 --> 0:02:22.919 motivated by a phrase that I heard from Ken Venturi, 0:02:23.520 --> 0:02:28.480 where he said, without public golf, the game withers and dies. 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:35.520 And when they held the nineteen ninety eight US Open 0:02:35.560 --> 0:02:38.000 at the Olympic Club, which is just across Lake Marsad 0:02:38.040 --> 0:02:41.760 from Harding, they needed a place to park the cars, 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.799 and somebody in their infinite wisdom decided that Harding Park 0:02:46.960 --> 0:02:51.760 was perfect for that job, and so Harding Park, this 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:58.480 great municipal masterpiece, was transformed into a parking lot. For me, 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:01.720 that might have been the low point. 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:08.640 This is Frida Egg Stories. I'm Garrett Morrison. In this 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:11.360 episode we tell the story of Harding Park golf course, 0:03:11.880 --> 0:03:14.040 of how it went from the pride of San Francisco 0:03:14.440 --> 0:03:17.639 to a parking lot and now this week to the 0:03:17.720 --> 0:03:21.959 venue of the twenty twenty PGA Championship. But bigger picture, 0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:25.639 this is a story about city golf. When Harding Park 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:29.519 was built, municipal golf courses were symbols of civic vitality, 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:33.760 of affordable recreation for the masses. As public works went, 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:38.960 they were popular and relatively uncontroversial. Things are very different today. 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:43.480 Most municipal courses have become casualties of budget cuts or 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:47.040 drains on local governments, or lightning rots for debates about 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:51.520 land use. Harding Park at different times has been all 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:54.200 of those things. It's been the best and the worst 0:03:54.200 --> 0:03:57.960 of city golf and everything in between. With the PGA 0:03:58.040 --> 0:04:01.680 Championship approaching, I wanted to through all of this. So 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:10.640 last week I sat down with bow Lynx. You're a 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:11.600 San Francisco guy. 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:15.160 San Francisco native, grew up in the Richmond District. Used 0:04:15.160 --> 0:04:17.599 to put my clubs on my back and walk up 0:04:17.600 --> 0:04:20.360 to Lincoln Park to meet an old friend of mine 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:23.200 named John Susco to play golf, where we'd cut intot 0:04:23.240 --> 0:04:26.040 the seventh hole and start playing. And we knew that 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:30.839 Lincoln was a little bit of a course, always very scenic, 0:04:31.279 --> 0:04:33.720 but sort of the place where beginners went to start 0:04:33.760 --> 0:04:36.680 out and learn the game, and when you kind of 0:04:36.720 --> 0:04:39.719 graduated to the next level, you went over to Harding, 0:04:39.880 --> 0:04:42.599 which was the big course that was the championship course, 0:04:43.360 --> 0:04:45.599 And I can remember the first time I went over there, 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:50.800 after waiting the three four hours to play, getting out 0:04:50.800 --> 0:04:54.200 on the golf course and some of the undulations in 0:04:54.240 --> 0:04:57.360 the course. We'd get to holes and I would look 0:04:57.560 --> 0:04:59.400 up at the green and I turned to the guys 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:02.719 I'm playing with. Is that flag in front of the 0:05:02.720 --> 0:05:06.719 bunker or behind the bunker? You couldn't tell because it 0:05:06.800 --> 0:05:10.280 was like tricking your eye. And there was this utter 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:14.920 fascination with seeing things like that that made you want 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:19.479 to go out play the course and learn it and 0:05:19.520 --> 0:05:21.760 then come back and play it once you had learned it. 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:24.279 By the time both started playing Harding Park in the 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:27.560 early nineteen sixties, public golf in the city already had 0:05:27.560 --> 0:05:28.280 a long history. 0:05:29.320 --> 0:05:33.799 San Francisco was one of the early adapters to urban golf. 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:37.360 By nineteen oh two, there was a little three hole 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.800 course out where Lincoln Park is, in an area that 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:44.600 was largely a graveyard, but there was three holes and 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:49.680 people played it, and by nineteen seventeen had finally expanded 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:54.480 to eighteen holes. But there was a problem. More people 0:05:54.560 --> 0:05:56.680 wanted to play the golf course than they had room 0:05:56.720 --> 0:06:01.599 for and so they decided to build a new municipal 0:06:01.680 --> 0:06:05.160 links on the shore of Lake Mercet And in nineteen 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:09.240 twenty two the Recreation and Park Department hired Willie Watson, 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:11.640 who had worked on the courses at the Olympic Club, 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:16.560 to design and supervise construction for a new course at 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:21.480 Harding Park. What became Harding Park, But what you have 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:25.279 to put in context historically in terms of the era 0:06:25.600 --> 0:06:30.279 at what it was like. San Francisco burned the ground 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:35.680 in nineteen oh six after a devastating earthquake, and yet 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:41.120 within nine years the city was rebuilt to the point 0:06:41.160 --> 0:06:45.800 where it held the World's Fair in nineteen fifteen, and 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:50.640 then ten years after that we had Harding Park. And 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:54.480 Harding Park wasn't the only construction project on the books. 0:06:54.839 --> 0:07:00.440 They rebuilt City Hall, downtown San Francisco, the Opera House, 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:06.920 the Symphony Hall, the public library, the museums, all kinds 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:12.080 of things. And it was an era where people could 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:15.520 get things done, and they did get them done. And 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:22.400 most importantly, the quality of the craftsmanship that you see 0:07:22.680 --> 0:07:25.520 is just it's almost like it's the lost art, you know, 0:07:25.920 --> 0:07:34.040 the stonework that would work, the grandiose architecture. It's unbelievable, 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:37.160 and it transformed the city from rubble into a majestic 0:07:37.240 --> 0:07:41.080 place that say world class city was then is now. 0:07:42.000 --> 0:07:46.040 These were government projects for the average person. 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:47.000 You know. 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:50.640 Harding Park wasn't supposed to be a private country club. 0:07:50.760 --> 0:07:53.840 It wasn't a private country club. It was a public 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:56.200 golf course played by ordinary people. 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.360 I mean it was built in nineteen twenty five, so 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:01.760 it's ninety five years old as it hosts a major 0:08:01.800 --> 0:08:05.040 for the first time. I'm Ron Kroutzcheck and I cover 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:07.840 golf for the San Francisco Chronicle. But it was built 0:08:07.880 --> 0:08:10.400 in nineteen twenty five. Kind of a glorious era for 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:13.480 golf course architecture. You know, think about all the courses. 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:16.800 You know, the same architects who built Harding built Olympic 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:19.400 Club right across the lake. And that was an era 0:08:19.520 --> 0:08:22.760 in the twenties and thirties when Alistair mackenzie was building 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:25.760 tons of courses in northern California from Cyprus Point up 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:30.080 to Meadow Club, and golf was really in an incredible, 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:32.440 gross spurt and incredible period of architecture. 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.120 If you talk to a knowledgeable San Francisco golfer like 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:39.760 Ron krotzcheck about the original design of Harding Park, you'll 0:08:39.800 --> 0:08:42.079 probably hear a lot about how the course is routed. 0:08:42.600 --> 0:08:45.120 That is the path it takes through the property. 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:48.080 You know, it starts out on the inside. All the 0:08:48.120 --> 0:08:50.440 first nine holes are all in the inner part of 0:08:50.480 --> 0:08:53.720 the course, and then the back nine kind of weaves 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:58.640 around the perimeter. And as you go from ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:02.280 thirteen green your first view of Lake Merced and then 0:09:02.400 --> 0:09:05.040 fourteen fifteen sixteen all the way down the strets is 0:09:05.040 --> 0:09:09.360 along the lake and it sort of builds in exhilaration 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:12.360 I guess is probably the best word. And then eighteen 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:16.400 is the shot over the neck of the lake, and it's. 0:09:16.280 --> 0:09:21.000 That kind of crescendo, if you will, where the music 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:25.080 picks up, the tempo picks up. Great golf courses all 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:28.680 have this sense of pace. It's like listening to a 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:31.360 piece of music, except you get to walk through it. 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:34.840 And it's a layout that from the day it opened 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:40.640 to today has always produced great golf. It's produced exciting golf, 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:45.920 and the people who have won there have been great golfers, and. 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:48.880 It goes all the way back to future major champions 0:09:48.920 --> 0:09:52.520 like George Archer and Johnny Miller and Ken Venturrey and 0:09:52.559 --> 0:09:56.600 Bob Rosberg kind of San Francisco's Grand Slam right there. 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:01.800 Growing up on the course, Ken Venturrey's father actually ran 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:05.640 the pro shop for many years at Harding and Venturi 0:10:05.760 --> 0:10:09.360 played Harvey Ward, who was US Amateur champion, in the 0:10:09.400 --> 0:10:12.200 title match of the San Francisco City Championship in the 0:10:12.240 --> 0:10:15.080 fifties and there were ten thousand fans out there. It 0:10:15.120 --> 0:10:17.280 was front page news and the chronicle the next day, 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:23.160 and that really added another layer of prestige to the course. 0:10:24.160 --> 0:10:27.200 With golf's popularity soaring. The city decided to make an 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:29.120 addition to the facility. 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:33.400 In the original layout for Harding, there was an interior 0:10:33.679 --> 0:10:36.880 gap in the architecture that was just if you will 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:40.760 open pasture. They were practice holes. People used to go 0:10:40.800 --> 0:10:43.640 out and hit balls there. Ken Venturi's one of the 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:46.560 great examples, Harvey Ward two. They'd go out there with 0:10:46.600 --> 0:10:49.440 their own balls and they'd beat them until dark. But 0:10:49.520 --> 0:10:52.880 here they had this area right inside Harding where they 0:10:52.880 --> 0:10:56.320 could put nine holes in for a short course. It 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:59.960 was supervised by Jack Fleming, who was the golf superin 0:11:00.080 --> 0:11:03.440 Tenant in San Francisco. He was on Alistair Mackenzie's crew 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:06.520 years ago, and they named it in his honor. They 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:09.320 called it the Jack Fleming nine. And it was a 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:14.559 damn good little golf course. Then there something else happened. 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.480 In the nineteen sixties early sixties. They started playing the 0:11:18.559 --> 0:11:23.200 Lucky International, and that was where I first saw Arnold Palmer, 0:11:24.400 --> 0:11:29.120 and he was playing my golf course, and Jack Nicholas 0:11:29.200 --> 0:11:33.840 was playing my golf course, and so was Gary player In, 0:11:33.960 --> 0:11:38.160 George Archer and all those other great players. And to 0:11:38.200 --> 0:11:41.440 know that you could go out there on Saturday morning 0:11:42.040 --> 0:11:45.120 and play the same course that they played well, that 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:50.080 took on a whole other meeting. You can't really describe 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:52.120 that in words. It's a feeling you have in your heart. 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:57.440 That's what makes places like Harding Park stick out so 0:11:57.559 --> 0:12:01.800 vividly in your memory. It's knowing that you played where 0:12:01.800 --> 0:12:02.360 they played. 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:08.040 There was that pride among regular golfers, that this was 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:12.200 a special place, that this was not just another public course, 0:12:12.800 --> 0:12:16.880 and that you know, as San Franciscans, they needed to 0:12:17.080 --> 0:12:20.000 protect that when that's what Harding sort of represented. I 0:12:20.040 --> 0:12:24.680 think golf's available to common players and common people. It's 0:12:24.720 --> 0:12:27.040 not an elitist It doesn't always have to be an 0:12:27.040 --> 0:12:29.720 elitist sport. You don't have to belong to a country 0:12:29.720 --> 0:12:33.720 club to have a good golf experience. And it was really, 0:12:34.280 --> 0:12:36.680 you know, a jewel of a municipal course then before 0:12:36.720 --> 0:12:38.040 it kind of fell into neglect. 0:12:41.600 --> 0:12:45.840 What happened to Harding Park in the seventies, eighties and nineties. 0:12:46.000 --> 0:12:48.199 How do you explain that and what did you observe? 0:12:49.040 --> 0:12:53.920 Well, at some point, I think the city had enough 0:12:54.160 --> 0:12:58.040 people tugging on its budget with other needs, which are 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:03.440 all legitimate needs. Money just got diverted and Harding Park 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:08.160 got forgotten. And after that the course sadly fell into 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:11.480 a very bad state of disrepair. And when I say bad, 0:13:11.800 --> 0:13:16.080 I mean really really bad. If you look at pictures 0:13:16.320 --> 0:13:19.480 of what happened, there were completely dried up fairways with 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:21.760 huge fissures in them. It was almost like there was 0:13:21.800 --> 0:13:25.079 another earthquake that came along, but just the ground dried up. 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.760 The clubhouse was run down. I mean there was open 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:34.760 wiring everywhere, not behind walls. Things were taped to counters. 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:38.360 There were no computers back then. It was a pretty 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:39.720 broken down operation. 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:40.680 You know. 0:13:40.720 --> 0:13:43.400 It was so sad that this had happened to a 0:13:43.440 --> 0:13:47.840 golf course that was so great. And there came this 0:13:48.000 --> 0:13:51.880 movement that said, we've got a history here, We've got 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:55.040 something that's been handed down to us. It's worth saving. 0:13:55.240 --> 0:14:00.480 And the one person with whom that message resonates more 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:11.360 than anybody else was my friend Sandy Tatum. When I 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.840 think of Sandy Tatum, I think of the most complete 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:18.680 human being I've ever met. The pedigree looks like this. 0:14:19.920 --> 0:14:24.880 He went to Stanford. He won the NCAA individual golf championship, 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:30.160 his team won the team championship. He was selected to 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:34.560 be a Rhodes Scholar. He was educated then at Oxford 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:39.040 and earned a degree there. He came back to the 0:14:39.120 --> 0:14:44.640 United States and became a lawyer. He became the president 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:49.680 of the United States Golf Association. He played amateur golf 0:14:49.720 --> 0:14:58.240 competitively all his life. And when you spoke to Sandy, 0:14:58.400 --> 0:15:04.480 here's a man who spoken full sentences, not phrases. There 0:15:04.480 --> 0:15:08.960 were no catch words. It was a complete thought. And 0:15:09.040 --> 0:15:11.160 you might ask him a question and there might be 0:15:11.200 --> 0:15:15.320 a pause. That's because he was actually thinking of his answer. 0:15:16.200 --> 0:15:19.440 And when you got that answer, you drew back on. 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:23.960 You said, this guy really knows what he's talking about. 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.160 Do you have any specific memories of playing with him 0:15:28.240 --> 0:15:29.160 at Harding Park. 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:30.880 I played a lot of rounds of go off with 0:15:30.920 --> 0:15:37.040 Sandy Tatum, but the most memorable was in the first 0:15:37.040 --> 0:15:41.000 t tournament that's held every year, and this one year 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:44.000 he invited me to play with him and with Harris Barton, 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:47.560 who's retired from the forty nine ers, And so they 0:15:47.600 --> 0:15:51.920 stick this young guy with us, young stockbroker, nice kids, 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:55.400 about twenty three years old. We're going out, we're having 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.400 a good time, and it starts to rain on about 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:01.840 the seventh hole, and we're going up the ninth fairway, 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:06.000 and Harris Barton leans over to me. He says, hey, bo, 0:16:07.400 --> 0:16:12.240 I think I'm gonna stop after nine holes. Could you 0:16:12.320 --> 0:16:16.920 ask Sandy if it's okay? And I said, Harris, you're 0:16:16.920 --> 0:16:21.280 an all pro offensive lineman. You ask Sandy if it's okay. 0:16:22.200 --> 0:16:25.480 And he didn't have the balls to do it. So 0:16:26.160 --> 0:16:27.800 I went up to Tatum and I said, you know, 0:16:27.920 --> 0:16:31.360 Harris is thinking to stop, and Sandy just you didn't 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:33.640 get mad or he says, hell, if he wants to stop, 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:35.600 let him stop. We're going to keep going, aren't we. 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:40.640 I said, yeah, So Harris drops out. We go along. 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:46.240 We played ten eleven and it's really coming down. I've 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:49.280 got some rain gear, Sandy's got some rain gear, but 0:16:49.440 --> 0:16:52.600 this kid has nothing. And the kid is tripping wet. 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:58.040 And so we get to the twelve hole and Sandy, 0:16:58.520 --> 0:17:02.840 at the age of you know, ninety, he can still 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:05.240 crack the golf ball. It echoes off his club face 0:17:05.480 --> 0:17:09.280 still and he just smokes one out there and this 0:17:09.359 --> 0:17:11.960 kid kind of hits kind of weak fade to the 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:15.239 right and we're looking for his ball in there, and 0:17:15.280 --> 0:17:18.480 I can see he's kind of dejected, and I say, Son, 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:23.000 you're pretty wet. You've just been out hit by somebody 0:17:23.080 --> 0:17:27.840 who's about sixty five years older than you are. Why 0:17:27.840 --> 0:17:31.480 don't you go in? He takes off. Now it's me 0:17:31.560 --> 0:17:35.160 and Tatum and a caddy. We play two more holes 0:17:36.000 --> 0:17:40.560 and the sun comes out and Sandy pars the fourteenth hole, 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:44.040 four hundred and seventy yard par four at the age 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:48.040 of about ninety and he turns me. He says, links, 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:52.879 this is why we stay out here. That's Sandy Tatum. 0:17:53.119 --> 0:17:55.320 That's playing golf with Sandy Tatum. 0:17:55.640 --> 0:17:59.800 He never quits, And in the late nineteen nineties, the 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:02.840 man who never quits set out to save Harding Park. 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:07.520 At first, Sandy Tatum made quick progress. He was well 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:10.760 connected both in golf and politics, and soon he had 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:14.280 the PGA Tour on board. Commissioner Tim Fincham agreed to 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:17.520 hold a future event at the new Harding Park. Tatum 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:20.800 also got San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown involved and started 0:18:20.840 --> 0:18:24.159 to make allies in the city's parks department. But ultimately 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:27.240 it was the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that would 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:30.879 have to approve the renovation, and the supervisors, along with 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:34.120 their neighborhood constituencies, weren't exactly gung. 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:38.640 Ho okay, so Shan Eilsborn. I am now San Francisco 0:18:38.720 --> 0:18:41.679 Mayor London Breachs chief of Staff, but at the time 0:18:41.920 --> 0:18:45.400 of the Harding Park renovation, I was a legislative aid 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:50.199 to then Supervisor Tony Hall, and the district he represented 0:18:50.400 --> 0:18:54.240 is the district that included Harding Park. Of course, you 0:18:54.320 --> 0:18:56.880 had a lot of different constituencies out there. You had 0:18:56.920 --> 0:19:00.400 your old guard that liked the fact that they could 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:03.920 pull up at seven point thirty, drop five bucks, play 0:19:03.920 --> 0:19:07.840 eighteen holes, have lunch, maybe drop another five bucks, play 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:10.840 another eighteen holes, and they were the club and don't 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.960 mess with what we got. It was their country club. 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:18.840 That was a very loud constituency. And then you had 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:21.720 the plenty of folks who would look at us and say, 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:23.879 wait a second, We're going to invest tens of millions 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.880 of dollars in that rich white men's sport when I've 0:19:26.880 --> 0:19:30.040 got swings in the Southeast sector that aren't rusty and 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:30.760 falling apart. 0:19:31.680 --> 0:19:36.560 Shaan Alsburn's boss, Supervisor Tony Hall, basically agreed with those complaints, 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:39.840 especially the ones from the Harding Park regulars. 0:19:40.160 --> 0:19:42.719 I mean, he had gotten elected in a very difficult 0:19:42.840 --> 0:19:47.240 race and Some of his biggest supporters were Harding Park 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:50.840 Men's Club folks, and they were in his ear. That 0:19:51.040 --> 0:19:54.240 was really the only perspective that he had, and it 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:59.280 got framed initially as privatization of the municipal course give 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:04.840 away to the PGA, and that initial I remember well, 0:20:04.920 --> 0:20:08.280 that initial hearing was a late afternoon. 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:09.200 And it was just bad. 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:14.040 He's talking about a subcommittee meeting in spring two thousand 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:17.160 and one when the Board of Supervisors first considered Sandy 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:18.120 Tatum's proposal. 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.119 It's a committee room, there's an elevated daist. Tony was 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.480 a member of the committee three supervisors. But it was 0:20:25.520 --> 0:20:28.960 Tony's show, so they just let him run the healing 0:20:29.280 --> 0:20:35.159 and Tony Tony was not a quiet guy. If he 0:20:35.280 --> 0:20:37.879 had a problem, you knew it, and he liked to 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:42.000 point out problems. And there was also an element of 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:44.159 Tony as a bit of a showman, and Tony was 0:20:44.200 --> 0:20:47.639 playing to the crowd and Sandy came in in his 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:53.920 beautiful suit. The koif Taire, the Stanford vocabulary, the Rhodes scholar, right, 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:56.120 he was a Rhodes scholar. I think the Rhodes scholar 0:20:56.240 --> 0:21:01.320 vocabulary and the charm of an old world gentlemen versus 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:04.280 these guys who were showing up in there. Ben Davies 0:21:04.440 --> 0:21:09.040 and their forty nine or war ra looked like they 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:10.960 had all played earlier in the day and were looking 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:12.879 to get out of the hearing to go play once more. 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:17.920 And there were probably fifteen to twenty of that group 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:22.480 who came and denounced Wrecking Park, who denounced Sandy, who 0:21:22.520 --> 0:21:26.560 denounced the PGA. This is our course, no privatization. Believe 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:29.199 it as it is. And Sandy got up there by 0:21:29.280 --> 0:21:32.239 himself and tried to make a pitch. And you know, 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:34.920 he and Tony really hadn't met yet. I don't think 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:38.399 Tony had any real appreciation for who Sandy was and 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:40.919 what he had done in his life. Tony was a 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:45.600 bit abrupt cut him off, and Sandy did not win 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:53.639 that room that day. But Sandy was, as always the 0:21:53.680 --> 0:21:56.760 perfect gentleman, and he didn't burn any bridges, he didn't 0:21:56.760 --> 0:21:57.960 take any personal lumbridge. 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:03.719 And Sandy, aside from being probably the smartest man I 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:08.280 ever met, he's also the most determined man I ever met. 0:22:08.520 --> 0:22:10.280 And he wasn't going to take no for an answer. 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:14.840 And one of the things that was very important to 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:20.200 him is that golf isn't just a game you play, 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:23.920 it's a life you live, and the game will teach 0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:28.959 you things about yourself that if you learn those things 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:32.800 and adapt those things to your daily life, you will 0:22:32.840 --> 0:22:38.360 become a better citizen. And that's where the idea emerged 0:22:38.760 --> 0:22:39.560 for the First Tea. 0:22:41.000 --> 0:22:44.080 The proposal became not only to renovate the golf course, 0:22:44.400 --> 0:22:47.040 but to establish a chapter of the First Tea at 0:22:47.040 --> 0:22:50.600 Harding Park. Now, back then, the First Tea was new 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:53.320 on the scene of youth programming. The idea was to 0:22:53.359 --> 0:22:56.160 teach golf as well as values and to reach out 0:22:56.160 --> 0:22:57.640 to underrepresented communities. 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:01.760 We're not building a golf course building a school. We 0:23:01.880 --> 0:23:04.560 have to change the culture. We have to change the world. 0:23:04.640 --> 0:23:06.960 And one of the ways we change is one young 0:23:07.040 --> 0:23:09.960 person at a time, and the First T can do that. 0:23:10.119 --> 0:23:13.159 It was central to the mission of Harding Park. Harding 0:23:13.200 --> 0:23:14.800 Park is central to the mission of the First T 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:19.600 And so slowly and with increasing speed, the movement built. 0:23:20.560 --> 0:23:23.320 And one of the things Sandy asked me to help 0:23:23.400 --> 0:23:25.560 him with, and I wasn't the only one, mind you, 0:23:26.680 --> 0:23:29.520 was when there was going to be a meeting, he says, 0:23:29.920 --> 0:23:33.520 can you turn out the troops and what he really 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:35.920 meant was, can you turn out folks so we'll get 0:23:36.000 --> 0:23:39.960 up to that microphone and say we need this. That 0:23:40.240 --> 0:23:43.080 coupled with the first tea and the people who would 0:23:43.240 --> 0:23:48.520 use that, you started to create something, not all at once, 0:23:48.640 --> 0:23:52.920 but with a momentum that built. Where do you want 0:23:52.960 --> 0:23:54.840 to be on the right side of history or the 0:23:54.880 --> 0:23:59.840 wrong side of history? And in San Francisco people slowly 0:24:00.400 --> 0:24:01.960 warmed up to the concept. 0:24:03.200 --> 0:24:05.399 And then, you know, I think we also caught a 0:24:05.400 --> 0:24:09.399 little fire. As much as Sandy was absolutely a big 0:24:09.440 --> 0:24:12.359 part of this, I think Harding Park also became a 0:24:12.400 --> 0:24:15.720 beneficiary of the early two thousands Tiger Woods phenomenon. 0:24:16.080 --> 0:24:16.240 Right. 0:24:16.320 --> 0:24:18.480 I don't think we were the only course that benefited 0:24:18.560 --> 0:24:22.359 from him being all over the place. And yeah, Tony 0:24:22.880 --> 0:24:25.080 turned a little bit of a corner and saw what 0:24:25.119 --> 0:24:27.960 the benefits could be and then became a great champion 0:24:27.960 --> 0:24:28.879 of pushing it forward. 0:24:30.320 --> 0:24:34.920 The big question was who's paying for it? The board 0:24:34.920 --> 0:24:38.480 of supervisors didn't want to pay for it. I understand that. 0:24:38.560 --> 0:24:41.600 I mean, I like it. I understand that Sandy didn't 0:24:41.640 --> 0:24:44.879 like it. He understood it. So he set out to 0:24:44.960 --> 0:24:49.640 find some way to stitch together the financing and this 0:24:50.040 --> 0:24:54.000 Open Space Fund was there, and he had a liaison 0:24:54.160 --> 0:24:57.199 in the City Attorney's office who was keen on the 0:24:57.280 --> 0:25:00.440 idea that this could be a great use of this 0:25:00.560 --> 0:25:04.639 money that could have a lasting impact because of the 0:25:04.680 --> 0:25:09.119 first t program, and so they got the money component 0:25:09.240 --> 0:25:13.159 put together. What I haven't mentioned yet is when you 0:25:13.320 --> 0:25:17.160